The invention relates to electrostatic and xerographic copying and duplicating machines.
More particularly, the invention relates to such machines in which the original or master to be copied or multiplied is laid face down, with a proper orientation of its image, upon a transparent support surface, e.g., a glass plate, with the support surface being provided with two masks or originals together forming a slit, the masks or originals possibly being arranged in transparent plastic jackets. Above such slit-defining originals or masks a further original is arranged, possibly contained in a plastic jacket. The further original is shiftably supported so that successive lines of the image thereon, if printed material constitutes the image, will move into the zone of the slit and thereby become unblocked for copying.
With such machines the copying sheets employed if of the usual size are as a rule only partially utilized, since in general only a fractional section of the image on the original is to be copied or multiplied. Normally these copying machines are designed to accept copying sheets of only one size, so that the use of sheets having a different size appropriate for the size of the section on the original actually to be copied is not possible. The structural modifications of such a machine which would be necessary to render it capable of processing sheets of a plurality of sizes would be very considerable and are therefore not made.
As a result, either the copying sheets discharged by the machine will have empty spaces of various sizes, or to better utilize the copying sheets a plurality of unrelated images will be formed on a single copying sheets by suitably arranging a plurality of originals on the support surface. In either case, it is necessary to subsequently perform a manual cutting operation upon the copying sheets, either to cut off the empty spaces in the first case, or to separate from one another those portions of the copying sheet bearing the respective unrelated images. This subsequent cutting operation is time-consuming, and for that reason expensive in terms of labor, and sometimes requires skill and precision beyond that possessed by the user of the copying machine.